Lymeswold Cheese

Lymeswold is a modern but now defunct cheese that was made from pasteurized cow's milk.

It was introduced in 1982. It never took off, though, so production was halted in the early 1990s.

Lymeswold Cheese was a soft cheese like Brie, modelled after French cheeses. In fact, the French market was the primary export target.

Lymeswold was a creation of officials at the Britain's former Milk Marketing Board, through its subsidiary Dairy Crest. The driving force behind it was the Chairman of the Milk Marketing Board at the time, Sir Stephen James Leake Roberts, of Little Wenlock, Shropshire (died 11 June 2002, aged 87.) Many observers agree that the semi-governmental organization had all the business aspects right: the public relations, the marketing, the advertising, the budget. All throughout development, it had been the subject of focus groups, market research and taste tests. But still, the cheese just refused to move off the shelves.

The cheese was formed in plastic PVC moulds.

Some people now say the problem was that the cheese was prematurely sold before it was ripe, to meet the initial demand they had worked to create, and the bad first impression was something the cheese just never overcame. Roberts blamed the failure, apparently, on EU milk quota rules.

History Notes

Brits will often rib Americans by saying they come from "Lymeswold, Wessex" (Lymeswold never having existed as a place, and Wessex not having existed (outside Thomas Hardy's books) since 1066.

There was, however, a Wymeswold in Leicestershire where there were six dairies producing Stilton in the 1920s. The largest one, the London Lane Dairy, was sold to the Milk Marketing Board's Dairy Crest subsidiary in 1962. The Milk Marketing Board, when they were first planning Lymeswold Cheese in the late 1970s, wanted to make in this Wymeswold dairy (which was converted to a dairy in 1910; previously it had been a Primitive Methodist chapel), but realized that the small dairy wouldn't be able to produce their projected demand for the new cheese (in hindsight, it would have done just fine.) One of the first package labels suggested for Lymeswold none-the-less had a church on it modelled after St Mary's in Wymeswold. Sadly, the dairy was closed in 1987, and torn down in 1989. The site is now a nursing home.

Language Notes

Lymeswold is not actually a place name, though it sounds like it. In fact, the cheese had two names: when exported it was called Westminster Blue, because people outside the UK were thought to have difficulty pronouncing Lymeswold, particularly the French - there is no combination of "wo" in French.

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Bon mots

"Never mind about 1066 William the Conqueror, 1087 William the Second. Such things are not going to affect one’s life… but 1932 the Mars Bar and 1936 Maltesers and 1937 the Kit Kat – these dates are milestones in history and should be seared into the memory of every child in the country."